Websites globally hit by major internet outage

FILE PHOTO: Vehicles drive past the New York Times headquarters in New York on March 1, 2010. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo

Multiple outages hit social media, government, and news websites across the globe on Tuesday morning, with some reports pointing to a glitch at U.S.-based cloud computing services provider Fastly.

High-traffic websites including Reddit, Amazon, CNN, Paypal, Spotify, and the New York Times were listed as experiencing problems by outage tracking website Downdetector.com, although several appeared to be coming back up.

The United Kingdom’s attorney general tweeted that the country’s main gov.uk website was down, providing an email for queries.

Fastly, one of the world’s most widely-used content delivery network providers, said “the issue has been identified and a fix has been applied. Customers may experience increased origin load as global services return.”

Earlier, most of Fastly’s coverage areas were facing “Degraded Performance,” the company’s website showed.

Reuters was not immediately able to confirm the root cause of the outages.

Nearly 21,000 Reddit users reported issues with the social media platform, while more than 2,000 users reported problems with Amazon, according to Downdetector.com.

Amazon’s Twitch was also experiencing an outage, according to Downdetector’s website.

Websites operated by news outlets including the Financial Times, the Guardian, the New York Times, and Bloomberg News also faced outages.